Teaching “calm technology” and “smart materials” as prospective trends in product design is the motivation of the educational workshop presented in this paper. Materials can trigger creative thinking. Indeed, concepts can be generated ideas that come from the encounter with a material showing the material's unexpressed potential. However, a smart material is a complex hybrid object. It is a highly technical matter that requires years of R&D to be developed and matured. It is also a highly social matter, that blurs the traditional boundary between matter and function in a product, creates an experience, and enhances sensations. The workshop presented in this paper is an opportunity for the students to analyze the complexity of user experience related to ambient devices using smart materials. In order to provide a guideline to perform this analysis, an approach based on heuristic evaluation is proposed to the students.
